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Has anyone actually used this? It was posted to HN the other day and didn't not seem to receive positive feedback. Most of the users profiles I have clicked on

Has anyone actually used this? It was posted to HN the other day and didn't not seem to receive positive feedback. Most of the users profiles I have clicked on seem pretty boring. I fail to see what is so attractive about it. I definitely am taking the owners claim of "31,000 requests an hour" with a grain of salt. Honestly, does the average person even care about being advertised to, or having their data mined? I have never heard anyone outside of tech circles even talk about it.

xnull2guest 12y ago
The people I talk to outside of tech circles care very muhc about privacy and having their data sold. But it's one dimensional to think about the average person when talking about Ello, or any other service. Why can't Ello just be a service for the not-average people who do care about their privacy?
- cwilson 12y ago
  I've had the opposite experience. The only reason anyone I know has signed up for Ello outside of the tech world is because they saw someone else sign up and don't want to miss out on something potentially cool. That's it.
  - xnull2guest 12y ago
    I don't know anyone outside the tech industry who has signed up for Ello either. But I do know a bunch of people who value their privacy. They just don't know what they can do about it.
- robryan 12y ago
  I think it is very hard to have a social network that appeals to a limited subset but to have enough of any one collection of people to make communicating on there worth their time. Just have a look at Google+, millions of people gave that a try but in the end only a very limited number of those formed enough connections to justify primarily sharing things on there. The question then really is, if there is enough of these niche groups that will provide enough user retention to make the economics work. There has been plenty of things written regarding app development and the difficulties in supporting recurring costs with one time fees. I suspect you would need a pretty significant userbase to support even a small team on cheap one time feature purchases.
  - woah 12y ago
    Could this be circumvented somehow... through web scraping?
  - egypturnash 12y ago
    It's worth noting that G+ also chased a significant chunk of early adopters away when they added that "legal names only" policy. It's been rescinded but the damage has been done.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Which makes it somewhat surprising that Facebook is trying it now.
    - robryan 12y ago
      I got the impression that the people who cared about the real names policy was a pretty niche (although a quite active group) compared with the millions that the service really needed to attract to hit the mainstream and seriously compete head on with Facebook/ Twitter.
      - egypturnash 12y ago
        I may be biased by being in a subculture that likes to use obviously-not-real handles on the net (furries) - but seriously, like half my Livejournal circles migrated to G+ when it started because they were sick of where that was going, and then scattered elsewhere when Google said REAL NAMES ONLY. This was a pretty connected set of early adopters moving at once. Would things have been different if Google had quickly relented and said "okay, sure, if you wanna be Fuzzybutt Wolftaur on G+, go for it"? I dunno. But chasing them away, along with all the other people with scarier reasons to want to avoid using their real name, sure didn't help.
kemayo 12y ago
I've tried it. It seems okay. It's closer to twitter than to Facebook. It interests me enough that I'll give it a fair shot at being used.
cwilson 12y ago
It's a social network based on two promises: 1. It's beautiful, which they had to add because they knew just saying "we won't sell your data" would not go far enough. They needed that extra edge. In my humble opinion, it's actually quite ugly, so I find it pretty funny they are advertising this as a selling point. 2. They don't sell your data. We all know this is flawed because there is no promise this won't happen in the future, and to boot MOST normal people do not care about this. Their initial launch had the right elements that allowed it to go viral and non-technical people started signing up. I would LOVE to see some stats from the Ello team around retention, as I am willing to bet a large sum of money that stat is really bad.
- dceddia 12y ago
  In regards to selling your data, apparently they've taken at least a bit of venture capital, so it's probably a realistic worry in the future... https://aralbalkan.com/notes/ello-goodbye/ https://aralbalkan.com/notes/ello-goodbye/
- faizmokhtar 12y ago
  Agreed. To me, the UI is not that beautiful. Heck, it's ugly to be honest. Not to mention it's buggy.
- icelancer 12y ago
  They should escrow a few million in a bank somewhere, and if the data has been deemed to be sold to anyone (judged by a third-party neutral arbitrator), the money is donated to the EFF. Then we'll see who is really serious about their promises.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Quite the interesting suggestion.
krenoten 12y ago
31k/hr is < 9/s, and yet apparently it's been having issues scaling. Other social networks have started with similar ambitions of never showing ads, gotten investors and punt on monetization as they "perfect the product". If they don't collapse, they either go freemium and segment the userbase or provide all users the same features and support this by showing ads. It's a nice idea but no for-profit has figured it out yet. Diaspora accomplishes it but lacks the most valuable asset a social network could have, which is a large userbase.
jdp23 12y ago
Yes, I've got an account there. For me, the early days of a social network are often very enjoyable -- lots of interesting people trying things out. The UI's not my favorite style and is a bit quirky but you can certainly have good conversations (at least on a computer; the mobile interface needs work). As for what's attractive about it: it's not Facebook. People are ready for something different. I noticed more and more people talking about time spent on Facebook the way they talk about time watching bad TV or eating junk food ... plus, in my experience, most people really do find Facebook's ads irritating. Plus for a chunk of people, the "real names" issue is a big deal; and this follows the stuff about Facebook's emotional manipulation experiments. Of course that doesn't mean that Ello's the answer to what people are hoping for; it's too early to tell how successful it will be. But I certainly believe they were getting 31,000 requests for invites an hour. Even if they were at level for 3 days straight at that level is only 2 million people -- a tiny portion of Facebook's english-speaking population.
ericcumbee 12y ago
From my observation it is only an issue, when they surface a new feature or start doing something that at first seems creepy. But then people adjust to it and think nothing of it.
woah 12y ago
Earlier last week, Ello was blowing up all over my Facebook feed. Mostly seemed to be a crowd that were tech-savvy enough to see the evil of Facebook's ways, but not knowledgeable enough to know that Ello is the exact same thing.
dredmorbius 12y ago
I've got my own account (https://ello.co/dredmorbius https://ello.co/dredmorbius), and actually rather like the asthetic (though I've styled it a bit as I'm wont to do). The bones are _vastly_ better than G+, and a number of the features (Shift+[015] UI toggles) are actually pretty good. A lot of bits are breaking, falling off, getting fixed, and getting added, so it's rather much in flux. The clue factor is high, though one of my first observations is that one of the adventures of new discussion sites is rediscovering all the people you'd found annoying elsewhere and blocked. It shines in some areas, lacks in others, the privacy, ads, and funding questions are very much open, but I think it's got a good start.

xnull2guest 12y ago

The people I talk to outside of tech circles care very muhc about privacy and having their data sold. But it's one dimensional to think about the average person when talking about Ello, or any other service. Why can't Ello just be a service for the not-average people who do care about their privacy?

cwilson 12y ago
I've had the opposite experience. The only reason anyone I know has signed up for Ello outside of the tech world is because they saw someone else sign up and don't want to miss out on something potentially cool. That's it.
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  I don't know anyone outside the tech industry who has signed up for Ello either. But I do know a bunch of people who value their privacy. They just don't know what they can do about it.
robryan 12y ago
I think it is very hard to have a social network that appeals to a limited subset but to have enough of any one collection of people to make communicating on there worth their time. Just have a look at Google+, millions of people gave that a try but in the end only a very limited number of those formed enough connections to justify primarily sharing things on there. The question then really is, if there is enough of these niche groups that will provide enough user retention to make the economics work. There has been plenty of things written regarding app development and the difficulties in supporting recurring costs with one time fees. I suspect you would need a pretty significant userbase to support even a small team on cheap one time feature purchases.
- woah 12y ago
  Could this be circumvented somehow... through web scraping?
- egypturnash 12y ago
  It's worth noting that G+ also chased a significant chunk of early adopters away when they added that "legal names only" policy. It's been rescinded but the damage has been done.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Which makes it somewhat surprising that Facebook is trying it now.
  - robryan 12y ago
    I got the impression that the people who cared about the real names policy was a pretty niche (although a quite active group) compared with the millions that the service really needed to attract to hit the mainstream and seriously compete head on with Facebook/ Twitter.
    - egypturnash 12y ago
      I may be biased by being in a subculture that likes to use obviously-not-real handles on the net (furries) - but seriously, like half my Livejournal circles migrated to G+ when it started because they were sick of where that was going, and then scattered elsewhere when Google said REAL NAMES ONLY. This was a pretty connected set of early adopters moving at once. Would things have been different if Google had quickly relented and said "okay, sure, if you wanna be Fuzzybutt Wolftaur on G+, go for it"? I dunno. But chasing them away, along with all the other people with scarier reasons to want to avoid using their real name, sure didn't help.

kemayo 12y ago

I've tried it. It seems okay. It's closer to twitter than to Facebook. It interests me enough that I'll give it a fair shot at being used.

cwilson 12y ago

It's a social network based on two promises: 1. It's beautiful, which they had to add because they knew just saying "we won't sell your data" would not go far enough. They needed that extra edge. In my humble opinion, it's actually quite ugly, so I find it pretty funny they are advertising this as a selling point. 2. They don't sell your data. We all know this is flawed because there is no promise this won't happen in the future, and to boot MOST normal people do not care about this. Their initial launch had the right elements that allowed it to go viral and non-technical people started signing up. I would LOVE to see some stats from the Ello team around retention, as I am willing to bet a large sum of money that stat is really bad.

dceddia 12y ago
In regards to selling your data, apparently they've taken at least a bit of venture capital, so it's probably a realistic worry in the future... https://aralbalkan.com/notes/ello-goodbye/ https://aralbalkan.com/notes/ello-goodbye/
faizmokhtar 12y ago
Agreed. To me, the UI is not that beautiful. Heck, it's ugly to be honest. Not to mention it's buggy.
icelancer 12y ago
They should escrow a few million in a bank somewhere, and if the data has been deemed to be sold to anyone (judged by a third-party neutral arbitrator), the money is donated to the EFF. Then we'll see who is really serious about their promises.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Quite the interesting suggestion.

krenoten 12y ago

31k/hr is < 9/s, and yet apparently it's been having issues scaling. Other social networks have started with similar ambitions of never showing ads, gotten investors and punt on monetization as they "perfect the product". If they don't collapse, they either go freemium and segment the userbase or provide all users the same features and support this by showing ads. It's a nice idea but no for-profit has figured it out yet. Diaspora accomplishes it but lacks the most valuable asset a social network could have, which is a large userbase.

jdp23 12y ago

Yes, I've got an account there. For me, the early days of a social network are often very enjoyable -- lots of interesting people trying things out. The UI's not my favorite style and is a bit quirky but you can certainly have good conversations (at least on a computer; the mobile interface needs work). As for what's attractive about it: it's not Facebook. People are ready for something different. I noticed more and more people talking about time spent on Facebook the way they talk about time watching bad TV or eating junk food ... plus, in my experience, most people really do find Facebook's ads irritating. Plus for a chunk of people, the "real names" issue is a big deal; and this follows the stuff about Facebook's emotional manipulation experiments. Of course that doesn't mean that Ello's the answer to what people are hoping for; it's too early to tell how successful it will be. But I certainly believe they were getting 31,000 requests for invites an hour. Even if they were at level for 3 days straight at that level is only 2 million people -- a tiny portion of Facebook's english-speaking population.

ericcumbee 12y ago

From my observation it is only an issue, when they surface a new feature or start doing something that at first seems creepy. But then people adjust to it and think nothing of it.

woah 12y ago

Earlier last week, Ello was blowing up all over my Facebook feed. Mostly seemed to be a crowd that were tech-savvy enough to see the evil of Facebook's ways, but not knowledgeable enough to know that Ello is the exact same thing.

dredmorbius 12y ago

I've got my own account (https://ello.co/dredmorbius https://ello.co/dredmorbius), and actually rather like the asthetic (though I've styled it a bit as I'm wont to do). The bones are _vastly_ better than G+, and a number of the features (Shift+[015] UI toggles) are actually pretty good. A lot of bits are breaking, falling off, getting fixed, and getting added, so it's rather much in flux. The clue factor is high, though one of my first observations is that one of the adventures of new discussion sites is rediscovering all the people you'd found annoying elsewhere and blocked. It shines in some areas, lacks in others, the privacy, ads, and funding questions are very much open, but I think it's got a good start.